Despite the widespread access to television technology worldwide, language remains a barrier to broad dissemination of program content. More television content is developed in English than in any other language, yet English is spoken by only a tiny fraction of the world's population. Likewise, programming developed in other languages is inaccessible to speakers of English. A small amount of this content is translated by traditional means at high cost and with delays of weeks or even months. However, for television content that is perishable in nature, such as news, sports, or financial programs, there is no solution to broad distribution across languages. Such programming rapidly decreases in relevance over time, making the translation delays of weeks or more unacceptable. As a result, virtually all live television content goes untranslated, with different live programming developed specifically for each language market.
Live and time-sensitive television content is increasingly being delivered over the Internet in the form of streaming video. Broadband Internet access, a de facto requirement for consumer access to streaming video, is being rapidly adopted by U.S. households. Market research suggests that by 2003, close to 9 million U.S. households will subscribe to a cable modem, up from 1.3 million at 1999 year-end. In Western Europe, exponential growth is predicted in the use of cable modems over the 1998–2003 time frame, and surveys are already showing that high speed access (ISDN or greater) is the predominant mode of Internet access. Regardless of the whether the delivery medium is a television set or an Internet-ready computer, language remains the critical barrier to widespread use of this broadcast content.